I And Love And You
by infinitedownpour
Summary: my hands they shake / my head it spins / ah Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in / three words that became hard to say / I and love and you


**I'm not actually sure yet if I'm done with this or not, so yeah.**

* * *

It's a moment that changes everything. Something that should be utterly simple yet turns into something life changing. If Blaine believed in faith, in destiny, and all those other things that set life's path, he would say this was when it set his life in motion. But Blaine doesn't believe in destiny, so he puts it down to a moment. A chapter of his life that's simply inescapable.

It's a chapter he's fondly named, should he ever write an autobiography, it's called petrichor.

* * *

It's raining when it happens, and this is the memory that sticks clearest in Blaine's mind, for reasons unknown. He's running, late as always, pushing past the hoards of people crowding the New York pavements. It's always busy, a buzz of life and dreams. He came here for that very reason; to follow his dreams. To be someone that made the crowds stop for a moment and notice that people exist.

Blaine doesn't like that part of New York. He doesn't like how seamlessly he can blur into the crowds and simply become a blank face. No one knows each other, and no one really cares. It's cold and it's sad.

The pelting rain doesn't help, but Blaine doesn't slow. This is not the first time he's been late for a lecture. It's not even the second, or third, or fourth. Honestly, he lost count after the eighth time he hurried into the room, breathing stuttering and loud; interrupting whatever the professor was saying. But he likes Blaine, see's the potential so he only sighed fondly.

It's things like this that slow him down, that make him collide with someone, bodies slotting together with hard elbows and muttered curses. Somehow, Blaine traps his arm around the other persons waist and pulls them together; immobile and slightly shaky in the middle of a busy New York sidewalk.

The moment his eyes lock on the other person marks a moment in Blaine's life, or the start of one. It's the first domino to set off the rest, to cause a reaction and change everything.

It's the kind of blue that's never been a blue. Something Blaine never got around to finding a name for before it disappeared from his life. Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he'll stay up and think. He'll think of blue eyes and soft hands and slow kisses.

But no, no, Blaine can't lose himself in that moment. Not when his past is staring him directly in the face. Not when the boy he ran from is in his arms, and maybe that look, maybe that's what heartbreak looks like. Blaine vaguely recalls a similar expression in his eyes five years ago.

"Hi," falls from his lips in a somehow calm tone, even though his skin burns wherever it touches Kurt, and right now, that's in a lot of places. These are places he doesn't deserve to touch, but Kurt is still trapped in shock and Blaine is selfish, so he tightens his arms around the older boy.

Kurt is not one to stay silent for long, and Blaine can see it in his eyes, see those fifty feet high walls slam down and barricade him from, well.

Barricade him from Blaine.

Five years should lessen the blow, he shouldn't expect anymore than cold indifference, but he does, and it's the slight throb in Blaine's chest that makes drop his arms and step back from Kurt.

The smile that flits across his face is the kind he offers customers when he's taking their orders; polite and cold. It's not the smile you give an ex-lover. It's not the smile you give _Kurt. _But Blaine does, and the one he gets in return is almost better. Blaine thinks he preferred the shock.

"I didn't know you were in New York." And yes, that's the important thing here. Kurt has every right to ask just what the hell Blaine is doing here, but he doesn't. He poses it as an offhand comment.

"Two years now," Blaine's voice is forced casual. He's leaving out parts of his past and from the flicker of Kurt's gaze Blaine can tell he wants to know what. "I'm doing music in NYU. Second year. How's your music going?", he manages to tack it on at the end.

Kurt's head tilts up, a proud set to his stance. It almost makes Blaine smile. "I'm doing fashion now. At the institute."

"Yeah? Huh, well. I can't say I'm all that surprised," this time Blaine does smile at the indigent look that flashes over Kurt's face. "You always seemed so into it. So passionate. You were easy to read, sometimes."

Kurt glances away at that, and Blaine drops his smile; it's far too wide and happy for a moment like this. But really, what the hell kind of moment is this?

"And here I thought differently." Kurt's voice is tighter now, even more reserved. It's when those blue-but-not-blue eye's flicker away from his own that Blaine realizes they're standing in the middle of the street, too close to each other and too far from the rest of the city.

Blaine can't bring himself to care that he's twenty minutes late for class.

A ping pulls Kurt from himself and back to now, back to New York and back to life. He pulls out his phone, and Blaine has to look away from the smile that spreads across Kurt's face. He knows that smile.

"Go," he finds himself saying. "Don't keep him waiting." He gestures once to the phone, ignoring Kurt's look. Maybe it's a little sad that Blaine knows. Maybe it's even sadder that he can feel jealously burning fierce and unrelenting in his chest. "I'm late to class anyway. But, uh. It was really good to see you."

It's ridiculous, but Blaine feels an inexplainable urge to cry. Maybe it's for the boy he lost or the love he threw away. Or maybe it's for himself, and how this is the first time in two years that Blaine hasn't felt lost in a city with buildings too tall and people that don't care.

He found a stitch of something he had lost in the person he had pushed away. Blaine chokes back later he guesses would be hysterical, because this really isn't funny.

It's one last look in to those not-blue-eye's, and on instinct, on something stupid, he leans forward and presses a kiss to Kurt's cheek, and then he's gone. Blaine turns away and pushes through the people and the rain and the tightness in his chest. He doesn't think it's the water pulling him down, but he tells himself it is. He's lying to himself; he's good at that.

Blaine glances back, because how can he not, and is met with a blur of faces, a sea of the unknown that's full of people that don't know his name and don't want to. Blaine forces himself to turn around, to swallow the loneliness in his throat, and keep walking.

It's harder than he expects to walk away from the first thing that's felt right in two years, but he does, he just keeps walking, walking, walking. Blaine goes to the park and counts the leaves on the grass until he can't remember anything but how pretty the world is when it's colored in orange.


End file.
